Get Rid of Bias, Immediately! [Academy]

Get Rid of Bias, Immediately!

Successful selling is about believing in yourself, your company, and your products. 

We’ve whipped that horse plenty in the past by touting belief as the No.1 factor to success in every business.  However, instead of talking about the importance of belief itself, I’m going to address a very damaging, negative effect that comes from a customer’s lack of belief in your company and lack of belief in the varieties they buy from you that can prevent any possibility of keeping a customer long-term. It’s called bias. Total belief has to be in place when farmers buy from you otherwise your future with them is pre-determined and that usually means short-term.   

Bias means lack of belief in you and your company. 

It’s means customers believe other companies’ products and services are better than yours. They believe you’re missing something, flawed in some way, not up to par. Even though most biases are unfounded, until proven otherwise they can be a real sales stopper.

When you’re new to a grower’s farm, prejudice, also called bias, is automatically created in the buyer’s mind.  They’re skeptical since they’ve already spent years learning to trust their current suppliers, so how could they be expected to trust you when you haven’t proven yourself. But every buyer, new or not, must begin the year with an open mind, free of prejudice against your company if they’re going to be successful using your products.  If they don’t start with an open mind, you have no chance of winning even if your products perform well on their farm. They will want you to lose no matter how good you are. 

Since seed supplies their entire livelihood, customers don’t separate performance of the products they plant from the perceptions of the company they bought them from. Both are based on total trust and belief.  In customers’ minds they go hand in hand. They won’t buy a top performing product from a company they don’t like or trust. This is where the seller comes in.  If you want your customers’ minds to be free of bias and have the correct thoughts, you have to place those thoughts in their minds yourself.  That means showing and telling your customers what sets you apart from others. Then make that story even more effective by taking them to the field and showing them how you raise yields on farmers’ farms.

Next, import growers to your office, facility or show plot location to further demonstrate those differences. Explain how you ask growers where they want to take their yields and how you help them get there. The key is using sincere eye contact, having a positive attitude toward the company you work for and demonstrating your support for EVERYTHING your company does and represents.   

Company and varietal bias are the most dangerous thoughts growers can place in their minds when doing business with you. But prejudice is not exclusive to first time buyers. Even your most loyal customers can end up with some level of bias against certain varieties, or they can create bias against you or your company if they feel ignored. If you don’t remove all bias, customers will carry it all year and may even find themselves discriminating against you by talking bad about you to others.  

Make sure you replace any biases your customers may have against your company and your varieties as early as possible into the new growing season. Don’t allow them to go through the entire season with perceptions lower than your best competitors.

Remember, if you want to know what you’re not teaching, look at your students. They will tell you what you haven’t been putting into their minds. Be prepared because some of what they’ll tell you may not be to your liking. The key is to teach your customers to think like you, talk like you and act like you. You can tell if they have bias or not just by listening to what they say and watching what they do.

And once your growers are bias free and start thinking like you, geometric sales increases will follow. That’s because their bias has been shifted to your competitors where it belongs,

Happy Selling,

Rod